Indian banks will have to start finding ways to preserve capital and use it more efficiently,bankers and analysts said on Saturday,a day after Indias central bank issued draft guidelines on Basel III capital regulations.

On Friday,the RBI said banks should have minimum tier-I capital of 7 percent,while total capital must be at least 9 percent of risk-weighted assets under the Basel III draft guidelines.

Implementation of the minimum capital requirements will begin from January 2013 and should be fully implemented by March 31,2017,it said.

We have to start working on it now so that,by the time we are there,our capital is utilised most efficiently, N. Seshadri,executive director of state-run Bank of India said adding that we have to do some things differently.